A DESCRIPTION OF FACTORY LIFE BY AN ASSOCIATIONISTREPRINTED IN THE VOICE OF INDUSTRY FROM HARBINGER 1846

...We have lately visited the cities of Lowell and Manchester, and have
had an opportunity of examining the factory system more closely than before.
We had distrusted the accounts, which we had heard from persons engaged
in the Labor Reform, now beginning to agitate New England; we could scarcely
credit the statements made in relation to the exhausting nature of the
labor in the mills, and to the manner in which the young women, the operatives,
lived in their boarding-houses, six sleeping in a room, poorl y ventilated.

We went through many of the mills, talked particularly to a large number
of the operatives, and ate at their boarding-houses, on purpose to ascertain
by personal inspection the facts of the case. We assure our readers that
very little information is possessed, and no correct judgments formed,
by the public at large, of our factory system, which is the first germ
of the Industrial or Commercial Feudalism, that is to spread over our land.

In Lowell live between seven and eight thousand young women, who are
generally daughters of farmers of the different States of New England;
Some of them are members of families that were rich the generation before.

The operatives work thirteen hours a day in the summer time, and from
daylight to dark in the winter. At half past four in the morning the factory
bell rings, and at five the girls must be in the mills. A clerk, placed
as a watch, observes those who a re a few minutes behind the time, and
effectual means are taken to stimulate to punctuality. This is the morning
commencement of the industrial discipline (should we not rather say industrial
tyranny?) which is established in these Associations of this m oral and
Christian community. At seven the girls are allowed thirty minutes for
breakfast, and at noon thirty minutes more for dinner, except during the
first quarter of the year, when the time is extended to forty-five minutes.
But within this time they must hurry to their boarding-houses and return
to the factory, and that through the hot sun, or the rain and cold. A meal
eaten under such circumstances must be quite unfavorable to digestion and
health, as any medical man will inform us. At seven o'clock in the evening
the factory bell sounds the close of the days work.

Thus thirteen hours per day of close attention and monotonous labor
are exacted from the young women in these manufactories. . . So fatigued
we should say, exhausted and worn out but we wish to speak of the system
in the simplest language are numbers of the girls, that they go to bed
soon after their evening meal? and endeavor by a comparatively long sleep
to resuscitate their weakened frames for the toils of the coming day. When
Capital has got thirteen hours of labor daily out of a being, it can get
nothing more. It could be a poor speculation in an industrial point of
view to own the operative; for the trouble and expense of providing for
times of sickness and old age could more than counterbalance the difference
between the price of wages and the expense of board and clothing. The far
greater number of fortunes, accumulated by the North in comparison with
the South, shows that hireling labor is more profitable for Capital than
slave labor.

Now let us examine the nature of the labor itself, and the conditions
under which it is performed. Enter with us into the large rooms, when the
looms are at work. The largest that we saw is in the Amoskeag Mills at
Manchester. It is four hundred feet long, and about seventy broad; there
are five hundred looms, and twenty-one thousand spindles in it. The din
and clatter of these five hundred looms under full operation, struck us
on first entering as something frightful and infernal, for it seemed such
a n atrocious violation of one of the faculties of the human soul, the
sense of hearing. After a while we became somewhat inured to it, and by
speaking quite close to the ear of an operative and quite loud, we could
hold a conversation, and make the inquiries we wished.

The girls attend upon an average three looms; many attend four, but
this requires a very active person, and the most unremitting care. However,
a great many do it. Attention to two is as much as should be demanded of
an operative. This gives us some id ea of the application required during
the thirteen hours of daily laborer. The atmosphere of such a room cannot
of course be pure; on the contrary it is charged with cotton filaments
and dust, which, we were told, are very injurious to the lungs. On entering
the room, although the day was warm, we remarked that the windows were
down; we asked the reason, and a young woman answered very naively, and
without seeming to be in the least aware that this privation of fresh air
was anything else than perfectly natural, that "when the wind blew, the
threads did not work so well." After we had been in the room for fifteen
or twenty minutes, we found ourselves, as did the persons who accompanied
us, in quite a perspiration, produced by a certain moisture which we observed
in the air, as well as by the heat.

The young women sleep upon an average six in room; three beds to a room.
There is no privacy, no retirement here; it is almost impossible to read
or write alone, as the parlor is full and so many sleep in the same chamber.
A young woman remarked to us, that if she had a letter to write, she did
it on the head of a band-box, sitting on a trunk, as there was not space
for a table. So live and toil the young women of our country in the boarding-houses
and manufactories, which the rich and influential of our land have built
for them.

The Editor of the Courier and Enquirer has often accused the Associationists
of wishing to reduce men "to herd together like beasts of the field." We
would ask him whether he does not find as much of what may be called "herding
together in these modern industrial Associations, established by men of
his own kidney as he thinks would exist in one of the Industrial Phalanxes,
which we propose.